In aviation manufacturing, a very large amount of work still continues to be performed manually by suitably qualified personnel. This is problematic particularly for a fibre composite construction because fibre composite materials such as carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) are inherently very expensive and the manufacturing costs are increased further by the manual labour. This prohibits or at least reduces technologically advantageous fields of application of fibre composite materials.
AFP (automated fibre placement) technology solves this problem by using a fully automated manufacturing process for composite components. This technology places robot-guided fibre-reinforced plastics strips along a defined path on a three-dimensional tool surface using pressure and temperature. With this technology, the component is constructed from carbon fibre tapes applied tape by tape, i.e. layer by layer. The usual procedure for inspecting the quality is for a member of staff to examine the component for quality shortfalls after every layer. It is vital to avoid errors in the position of the tapes, even errors of just a few millimeters, for instance 2 mm. Various error patterns can also arise during placement, for instance too large a distance between tapes, overlapping tapes, twisted tapes, tapes that have been pulled out or severed, tapes joined together (splice), etc. Hence for large components, inspection is extremely time-consuming and error-prone. Since CFRP is inherently a black material, it is very hard to ascertain or detect the existence of gaps, which equate to a defect.
Implementing an automated quality assurance system (QAS), which ascertains production faults during the AFP production process of CFRP components, is known from the prior art. U.S. Pat. No. 8,668,793 B1 describes, for example, using an optical camera system for in-process fault identification and using a laser projector for fault indication. This system is used to identify and record defects during the production process. Nevertheless, the member of staff must subsequently still inspect the recorded faults personally and, if applicable, consult an expert such as a structural load specialist in order to assess the implications of the defect.